I enjoy listening to comedian Jen Fulwiler’s podcast from time to time, and she recently talked about how it can be useful to expand our goals, time-wise, for the sake of our own sanity.

For instance, do you shoot for writing 1000 words a day? Do you feel frustrated, guilty, angry, or overwhelmed when life happens one particular day, and you aren’t able to meet that goal?

What would happen if you changed that goal to 7000 (or 6800) words a week? To 30,000 (or even 28,000) a month?

What would happen is this:

• You’ll have allowed space for life to happen on any given day
• You will stress less. You’ll understand that if you don’t quite meet your daily average word count today, you can find or schedule time to make that up later and still meet your weekly/monthly goal.
• Your mood will improve around disturbances and interruptions, because you have accounted for them, and they will feel less threatening to your goals.
• You’ll focus more on the big picture, which will help you put small picture frustrations or issues into perspective.

I thought this was fabulous advice, applicable to writing goals, for sure, but also to other things.

It’s important to give ourselves grace, wiggle room, and space for the Holy Spirit to pull us away from OUR plans so that HIS can unfold.